SO, I do the same thing, BUT I buy a 50 pound bag of ALFALFA pellets (horse feed) and put a small layer over the brown material you spread and then wet it, and then put the topsoil/compost on top. You won't believe how that garden seems to just take off with the added green material! The 50 pound bag only costs $16 and it provides extra nutrients that grow magic!

In my own 68 years of experience gardening in NC with Bermuda grass, the only way to keep it out of your raised beds is to remove it by hand or put the commercial-type greenhouse fabric under and around ALL the beds and simply add worms to it! I have one without fabric under and it is also the only one with mice tunnels in and damage from them! Cardboard will not stop Bermuda grass, I have seen it grow through the middle of a huge sweet potato in my dad's garden and the roots are much deeper than we are told, I know from having hand-dug a large area that is now my newer garden for 2023. It did not earn the nickname Devil grass or wire grass for no reason!

ok who else is in love with that garden cart/wagon thingy! i need one!

I was real happy to hear you say you run out of engery at your age. I feel better now at 67 that I also run out of engery so much sooner than I use to.

Thanks. Glad to know I'm not the only one who starts a raised bed with yard debris. I usually have lots of leaves in the fall, so that's when I start them. Do about 8 inches of leaves, 2 inches of soil, another layer leaves, soil etc. to about 4 to 6 inches over the top. By spring it's just right and ready to go. All that stuff continues to compost, the worms love it.

It was so cute--after you started talking your chickens came over to the fence to see what was going on!! xo

I too enjoyed your chickens as I have chickens that help! But what you said about using parts of your old garden in your garden bed is really helpful. I like the way you filled your raised bed. I also run out of energy at 72 and neuropathy in my legs.😂 but I wobble along and still enjoy it thanks

Since I have no growing skills I love watching…but can we talk about how cute, sorta timid the chickens are coming by to see and eat something?…? Love them so much!!

From experience, I recommend to anyone watching that you make sure the cardboard is UNDER the walls of the bed. I am constantly pulling bermuda grass &tc from the very edges of my beds because I did not do this.

Other good organic matter for the bottom of your raised beds, is old split firewood logs that are too rotten to burn. When firewood gets too old, it gets really lightweight and burns really fast, so you don't get as much value out of burning it. When it's in that condition, it makes great filler for the bottom part of your raised beds. It's already gotten a head-start on breaking down and is primed for use in a raised bed. Over the winter, when you go out to get firewood for your stove or fireplace, if you come across a lightweight or rotten log as you're loading up your cart, toss it into a separate pile to be used in the spring in your new raised beds.

I started watching your video and when you mentioned your "3 Rasied Bed Soil Mixes Compared", I couldn't resisting pausing this one and checking out your test. Impressive! Better than anything else I've ever viewed. I do comparative testing like this myself, but not in such a controlled fashion. And I've always grown in raised beds: years ago, I started with Mel's Mix but I've built several beds since then and I now fill my beds in a similar fashion. I'd estimate I'm at least 40 years older than you and I consider myself an experienced gardener. I wish I knew at your early age what I know now. No gimmicks. No formulas. Simple principles. Useful information. Thank you.

Love how your hens appear to check out the activity! They're just like my cat who always appears out of nowhere when I'm gardening! Excellent video. Thanks!!

I have heavy mole/vole pressure where I live and it's pretty frustrating to say it mildly. My son made some raised beds as a secret mothers day present and I'm forever grateful. Hindsight I would spend a little extra $$$ and get the galvanized screen to attach to the bottom of the raised beds before filling them. If you're going to make a raised bed within 15 ft of a tree you might want to put a solid bottom on the bed (if its tall enough) because the tree will put roots up into the beds and suck your nutrients and moisture out of your soil. I like the layer method so of course wood/wood chips at the bottom, all kitchen scraps and raw compost including manure in the middle, 6 inches of a good soil mix (don't be afraid to use a little clay soil in the mix) top it off with 2 to 4 inches of the finest and blackest compost you can buy. Also expect to have to put 2 to 4 more inches on the bed each year. It's better to do that at the end of your growing season to let the bed build up the soil biology during the winter. I always stack about 4 inches of shredded fall leaves on the top of all my beds to break down over winter and feed the worms too.

That tip to not plant perennials is gold - thanks a ton Jill!

Love this video......4 hours is about my limit as well, but love what gardening does for your mind, body and spirit!!!

I filled the bottom of mine with rotting logs covered in mycorrhiza, the second year was amazing, it was filled with mycorrhiza and everything was giant sized, not much the first year but the second year was impressive

In my parents garden they had planting beds and walkways and we got tired of pulling weeds in the walkways. I took old carpet from our home and cut it to size and put it down on the walk ways and it completely stopped the weeds, so it is just another idea that you can do to stop the weeds and save some money. It lasted for 15 years outside and could have lasted longer, so its worth it.

I was gifted two ridiculously tall and long planters this winter. When I done the math it was going to cost about a grand to fill plus all that soil would be a waste. I ordered a bail of hay and had it delivered for 40 bucks. We filled both up to about a 8 inch depth of hay. It worked like a charm and I didn't break the bank. It also help a local farmer unload some unusable hay. LOL I still have hay left over for other projects. Great upload 👍

I absolutely love watching her video!! She is so likable and informative without talking over your head. I learned allot from her in just this one video. Loved it!!

That will work. I also put down 1/4 inch galvanized wire mesh first. Stops gophers and such.

Just did four of these for my wife an I did the exact thing you are doing here hope it's a success

This is my first year doing raise garden beds . Price of soil really adds up , this video is really gonna help ! Thanks!

if you get a car ramp (to pull a car onto change the oil, etc) you can use that to run the wheel barrel up it and dump it without hurting your bed :) we order raid bed mix in bulk from our local place this year and trying that out, stright compost is good but has nitrogen issues (OMRI certified)

We have 20 acres with some woods in Southern Arkansas. During our winters and in the spring, I go into our woods and collect decayed tree material and fill my beds with it. I also use mowed fall leaves and grass clippings; our goats decayed bedding material and add plant waste material from our kitchen. I use eggshells, Epsom salt and the comfrey leaves from the comfrey I grow and spread throughout my property. I also fertilize with the comfrey tea I make and goat manure.

I did try this 3 years ago, It did save cost and works pretty great.. but I also created a haven for rolypoly/pill bugs :) sooo the potatoes and tomatoes that i started there, I had to share with them. I still retained 70 to 80% of my tomato crop for my own kitchen, and they were very healthy and put out an abundance of tomatoes. but the potato crop was nearly forfeit because roly polies apparenty really love potatoes.. but I was not really out anything as is was an experiment, and the seed potatoes were from my own storage. the second year i made the mistake of using straw from the box store... Blister bug invasion... still fighting them now during the 3rd season... I should have stuck with scrap from in and around my own property... Thanks for sharing :) all and all I'm very happy with the project, and will use this idea (and what i've learned) in the future to build many more beds :)

I lined my bed once with tree limbs, tree hunks of wood, leaves, etc... then farm soil and chicken coop clean out. Within the first few months the soil dropped down a good 50 percent. I added more soil bringing the level back up and it sank down again. It just does not keep its height😵‍💫. The logs have long since composted down to amazing black organic soil 😊.

Great video, seeing you actually doing it is what I appreciated most. Boy what energy you have !!!

Talk about choping up the slow way! I bunch them up, then cut then together. You can do a lot of branches or other organic waste in a very short time. Of course, I'm just some lazy 75 year old that has not much patience. lol I tried doing hugelkultur and then a wild bunny decided she could turn it into a home for herself, and I had to forget about it for planting. Got to give it to her, her entry way is amazing. Aditional benefit, bunnies love eating branches in the winter. All I have to do is throw some new ones on top.

Cow manure is what I use. Rabbit manure and horse manure are both good I think. I start a compost bucket with dry cow manure and grass then add coffee grounds and shredded paper, kitchen scraps. I've had people try to buy my compost!

I called it from the title. I do commercial landscaping and I’ve used stacks debris and logs when planting gardens/Landscapes/containers. It puts our lazy man compost to a higher level.

Thank you for the tips on how to fill raised beds with what we have! I'm a newbie to gardening & have been wondering the answer to that & you answered it. I was so impressed with you & your video that I subscribed. I am excited to learn more about gardening & look forward to watching your other videos!!! You are the answer to my prayer for the help & info that I need to start my first garden this year & hope to have a raised beds. Thank you again!

The gentleman who made the comment about alfalfa pellets being $16 per 50# bag left this comment over a year ago, I believe before this insane inflation assault on our country. We farm and have not seen a price on alfalfa pellets that low from any of our sources in a long while. Unfortunately, its been about $22 for a 50# bag for some time now. You could try Tractor Supply (although, I am not a fan), or any of your closest feed stores. They should carry it since a common food stock in the farming industry.

First time watching and subscribing. This is the method I learned from watching KZfaqr, Lead Farmer 73. You could have also used large branches from your yard to help fill it quicker. I have a huge pile of pine straw and hay with chicken and goats droppings I put in my gardens. I can't wait to see mines next year. Good job!♥️

A great additive for any planting is coffee grounds. The worms love it

The best thing of having landscape barrier cloth under your raised bed is water leaches down and up into your bed. If you get a rain over several days or a frog drowner it goes into the underlying soil, and when you have a dry spell the water in the soil under the bed can wick up. It also encourages earthworms to migrate up into your bed helping to aerate it.

Your video came jyst in time. We are putting in our first raised bed next week and now I know what to do. Thank you!

Worms love the cardboard, too.

Watching this just before filling my raised beds. Thank you. very helpful.

There's a video with a guy who used tree limbs. (For the bottom). By the next year they were all broken down. Uses a large space, ends up soil.

When I went to build my raised beds I went with the hügelkultur method as well, I built these in the fall so they would have the winter to settle a bit. When I put in my raised beds 2.5 years ago I dug down 2 to 3 feet first. I filled the trench with logs, actually I cruised the neighborhoods for weeks picking up logs, branches and yard waste. At the very bottom I placed fresh cut logs and worked up to pretty rotted logs, filling in with branches, leaves, wood chips and various yard waste. Then started layering native soil from the trench plus purchased top soil and compost. It was still expensive filling my initial 3 beds, but not as bad if I had not dug down using logs as filler and the native soil. It was amazing how much they would settle the first two years. The second year I was able to make a lot of compost when I put in the remainder of my beds. I must say, digging below the beds was a lot of work and a real mess, but it really paid off. My raised beds are doing fantastic. Enjoy your videos.

Hello, I've stumbled upon your fantastic uploads.. obviously you have bundles of enthusiasm and passion for what you do.. whilst watching and listening to you I have found two clear solutions for you building raised beds... First is the offloading of your barrow, second is your Time and energy... I am subscribing to your channel and hopefully you won't be offended with my comment.

I did this in my raised bed. Works great!

Thank you for the information.It really helps me plan my raised beds.Seeing you actually filling your beds builds my confidence as I might have thought about using what you used but I feel ok about it now that I see that other people do it too.

Starting our new raised Bed. Knew we needed to fill it without to much dirt This Vid confirms my thoughts. Thank You.

This is my first year doing raised beds(our clay soil didn't work well last year...or at least as well as I wanted.) I lined the bottoms of mine with limbs and pinecones that had fallen off the trees and then put compost I let sit over winter to break down in, then started with my soil mix. Very similar. Good video.

Good information there Jill. You could build yourself a little ramp to put next to the raised beds to run the wheelbarrow up to tip into the beds.

About to start my own journey, found this very informative, thank you!

I did the same thing, taking the oak leaves and grass clippings to mound up into my raised beds along with chopped up sticks. The last two years has seen amazing production from this practice. I do use my chipper shredders to chop up oak sticks into small pieces to cover my plants in May and June to reduce watering needs by a huge factor, making it much easier to manage the garden with automatic watering with watering done only every third day except in the hottest weather. Great video and I'm a new subscriber!

Hi Jill! I always enjoy your videos. This is another great one. Thank you for taking time to make it! Looking forward to more.

Great video- getting ready to do the same. I usually use a bucket to scoop out of the wheelbarrow then dump it into the raised bed. It goes quicker. Happy growing.

This is exactly what I am doing now. I bought 5 small raised beds...have lined the bottom with cardboard and will be using saved yard cleanup as well as the dirt from repotting my houseplants. Excited to finish preparing these beds and start planting.

Yes new to gardening at 70 and I am fortunate to be able to do the physical part of filling the beds. I hired a young man to install cattle panels for trellises and t post. I filled mine this way.

Great idea! Thanks for the tips and can't wait to see the progress- LOVE GARDENING!!

Just discovered your chanel and have subbed. I'm in the process of building a greenhouse and raised beds and will be following the hugelkultur method. I'm also making my own compost, leaf mould and worm castings. Good luck with your growing season xx.

Thank you for this awesome video. I learned so much, and a bonus was seeing the cute chickens pop up in the background ever so often! :)

U r adding some nice organic matter to your beds. Looking great! Thanks for sharing your wonderful tips😀

I'm a new subscriber I just found you and I love this video it's so much useful information I have raised beds in my back porch I have been doing the same thing you have but you do it totally different so I can use yours and mine and make it better soil that way so I love to keep listening to what you have and hopefully to grow super yummy food to enjoy 🥰💚💚

i appreciate your thorough explanations. Well done and God bless.

Great video, Jill! I’ve been contemplating getting one of these raised beds.

You have a wonderful garden layout. I love the tunnels. I’d want to spend as much time as I could in a beautiful garden like that. Love the chickens coming to visit hoping for a handout.

Excellent job on the raised beds, well done, enjoyed. Many thanks.

Hi Jill. Great video. I did cardboard, then scrap wood I was given, paper shred, and then top soil/compost. My raised beds are only 12", but it can be done with any size bed.

I do like the way she preps her beds. I find mulch hay works great. I usually use a half bail per corse.

I put branches and things on the bottom, if I have them and then straw. I use bales to insulate in places around for the winter and use it in beds when I need filler. I also throw in things like toilet paper rolls, and paper packing materials that come in boxes at work. I top them off with "raised bed" bag soil from my local hardware store. The following years I move on to composting and anything else that it needs.

Those pine needles would make a nice leaf mould at the bottom of the bed (no they don't cause the soil to be acidic, pines just prefer already acidic soils)

In our raised beds, we used slices of Praire hay from small square bales to fill half way up. In time this will decay, then we’ll add a little of good soil now and then to top it off!

I was going to through a bed out but kept the bottom and dismantled it and got some good wood 😁 And made a raised bed ! With the price of lumber I saved a few dollars .

Great video! Calming and educational. Thank you.

Thanks for your suggestion, I am going to try your way, wish me luck..

Thank you Jill, you may have just saved me some money.

This is an amazing idea! I have a raised bed and not near enough soil to fill it. It does have some soil left in it from previous seasons and last year I grew in that soil with some success. I think I'm going to shovel all the dirt out, put down a lot of cardboard and other compostable debris (we have a LOT of dried wood, and leaves for days!). Then mix the soil with a couple buckets of compost before shoveling it all back in. Hopefully, that fills out the bed more, gets rid of my brush pile, and gives me a place to deal with all the leaves I raked up last fall.

First time seeing you. I was very impressed! I find when I use a soilless mix for any of my potted plants, no matter the size pot, it sinks any way. I used something like you did with a medium pot and planted a Dwarf Mayer Lemon tree in it. Since it will have to be transplanted into a larger pot in time I guess it won't matter when it sinks. I used sticks and garden debris and some fine wood chips in the bottom quarter of the pot. Hope the wood chips won't hurt the tree. Will look up your other videos.

I loved this video 🌱🪴Happy gardening everyone 😆

I step on it at the end, to push all the organic material down a bit. Then I add more soil and/or compost.

Fantastic tips, thanks for your hard working and efforts…

great!! Im going2 prune today to start filling my empty raised beds.

I've been looking for something to do very similar to this. I hope mine works as well as your pictures turned out.

Thank you! You did good. I thought you were going to conk out. But you filled those beds. Thanks for the tips

Thanks a lot for the super ideas , how to fill raised garden bed. thanks again

Brilliant. This is essentially a variety of hugelkultur, or maybe “lasagna” composting. My plants would be super happy with this, especially in a year or two.

Just what I was looking for thank you. Keep up the good content

I use a thick layer of cow manure first, as I'm on a cattle property, they a layer of old rotted hay or straw or and lawn grass clippings. I spread a thick layer of reasonable potting mix over all that and water very well. I plant into that and cover with an inch of the lawn clippings. Eventually the manure and hay rot and worms in the millions condition all the soil even in the hard red soil underneath. The veges thrive once their roots reach the rich mulch. In SW QLD here coming into spring soon.

Working your butt off! We’ll done and thanks for the ideas!

If you have a lot of wild brush nearby, when you use a hedge trimmer to keep them under control, rake it up, and use that. We have a lot of Selal in PacNW, and it makes great mulch to add to a new garden.

Nice job! Thanks for sharing your work.

Fantastic. If all goes to plan. Hope to make some rased beds this year. Love the video.

I loved watching the chickens hovering, hoping for a yummy treat perhaps.

First time seeing you here too! Thank you for sharing!!!

About many plants roots, often most of a plant is below ground, assaspsgest digs 17 foot in good conditions.. Thanks for the teaching

thank you for all the ideas

Very helpful video! Thank you for sharing your successes!😊

Dear Jill I've been looking for you! Love Jack

Glad to see you using cardboard it works great

I bought a raised bed like this from Vego Garden. It cost me a final cost of $196, after a $15 discount, and $11.56 taxes added on (free S&H). I got the 17" tall, 9 in1 garden bed. I just needed a max size of 3.5' x 6'. I'm glad they took PayPal, since I don't use credit cards. With the high cost of wood right now, I decided to get this kind of raised bed.

I live on very shallow soil over bedrock, either flooded or dried out . For 30 years i have been using anything i can get my hands on to fill the beds including dawn raids in the local farmers ditches to finally get productive trees and raised beds though still at risk in extreme weather events as not enough water to be able to use on garden in dry periods here in supposedly wet Scotland that is now having surprising hot dry weather at times . Cardboard is under suspicion atm due to forever chemical contamination via releasing agents in production . Its a hot topic in my garden group .

Thank you so much for this video. I told my hubs I wouldn’t spend anymore $$ on the garden 😂 & I have enough soil to make my last raised bed if I do it this way. Thank you!

I'm putting in raised beds right now. I had a couple of tree stumps ground and it's mixed with soil. There is quite a bit left over and once I have the cardboard down I will toss that in on top. Have some dead grass as filler as well. Saves a lot on buying dirt...

When i did mine i used thick layers of newspaper on the bottom that i got from my library,i have termites in my area cardboard draws termites frim my experience. It took a few seasons but my worms finally worked up in it.

Good job my dear happy Gardening

I just found you!! I love this!!! And the info. And the great chickens interested in the background too! Lol!😂 I’m subbing! Thank You!